As Labour MPs prepared to cast their final vote on the education bill last night, the optimists among them cast a cheerful eye on the Guardian's ICM poll, which showed them trailing 34% to 38% behind the Conservatives. "Only four points behind after what we've been through? Not bad," they told each other.

Less sanguine spirits remain fearful that Tony Blair's government is on a slide that can only be reversed by new leadership. "Either Gordon renews us or David Cameron will," one of Tuesday night's 69 education rebels warned. Older Tories, who remember John Major's dysfunctional decline, claim to recognise similar symptoms in which the very machinery of government lacks the will - or capacity - to soldier on.

Yet Tuesday's revolt on the education bill, larger than the 52 Labour MPs who voted against the much modified bill's second reading on March 15, was not a "get Blair" vote, though plenty of the rebels would like to get him. It was on a respectable issue of substance: a bid to require community schools seeking to become independent trusts to ballot parents, as grant-maintained schools were required to (at the insistence of peers) after 1988. Persuasive arguments were made on both sides before Labour rebels and Lib Dems lost by 121 to a Blair-Cameron 412. All the rebels were old hands, except Jim Devine, Robin Cook's successor as MP for Livingston, who broke his duck.

Even if Tory peers and cross-benchers radically amend the bill to give trust schools greater freedom, forcing Labour and the Lib Dems to reverse it (an unlikely scenario) in October, Mr Blair's legislative troubles may now be over for the summer. But the ICM poll's findings underline how voters are losing patience over policy disappointments, the trust issue, and administrative incompetence of the kind the home secretary, John Reid, was disowning at the Home Office (again) yesterday.

Labour blames the media for pumping up the NHS "crisis". But it is far from clear that all the sweat over the education bill will actually have much impact on the failing schools it seeks to rescue.

That prompts some Labour MPs to say that Blairite health and education reforms are backfiring and should stop, others that it must proceed more carefully. "We were doing fine on education when the mantra was 'standards, not structure' and we weren't trashing what we'd done before," said one previous rebel who thought last night's bill sufficiently amended to vote for it.

One amendment not in the bill was Ruth Kelly and her schools minister, Jacqui Smith, both amended - to other jobs. Alan Johnson, the emollient new broom, impressed MPs this week. Today he will make a reformer's speech which will refocus his attention on standards - "what happens to kids in class".

But Mr Blair wants to go ever-faster, anxious to secure his elusive legacy. After today's pensions white paper he dashes off to Washington for 24 hours to discuss troop withdrawals from Iraq. Decisions on the energy review loom, with divisive nuclear implications. At question time yesterday he was forced to duck claims that John Prescott had refused to give up his ministerial dacha at Dorneywood. It looked weak. Thank goodness, say loyalists, for June 9's distraction: the start of the World Cup, and England's first match the following day.